{"id":329156,"date":"2026-07-21T06:20:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T06:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=329156"},"modified":"2026-07-22T16:14:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:14:22","slug":"lammy-fighting-to-cover-up-foreigners-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=329156","title":{"rendered":"Lammy fighting to \u2018cover up\u2019 foreigners crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Hymas \u2013 The Telegraph July 19, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

David Lammy (pictured above) is taking legal action to block publication of foreign nationals’ crime rates in England and Wales, provoking claims of a “cover-up”.<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is seeking to overturn a ruling by the Information Commissioner that data revealing the full scale of foreign offending in England and Wales from 2018 to 2024 should be published.<\/p>\n

The Centre for Migration Control (CMC), a think tank, asked the MoJ to reveal the total number of convictions broken down by nationality and offences for the seven years under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws.<\/p>\n

But the MoJ claims the cost of providing the information would be disproportionate and that some of the data could lead to the identification of individuals in breach of their rights to privacy if it was published. Both arguments were rejected by the information watchdog.<\/p>\n

On Sunday night, opposition parties claimed that the MoJ’s actions amounted to a “cover up”.<\/p>\n

Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, said: “Labour have consistently refused to publish sex crime data by nationality, even though we know migrants from some countries are much more likely to be convicted of rape and sexual assault.<\/p>\n

“Why are they trying to appeal against releasing the data? Do Labour just want to cover up the truth about foreign national offenders?”<\/p>\n

Robert Jenrick, Reform UK’s economics spokesman, said: “The cover-up continues. Successive Tory and Labour justice secretaries have refused to publish this basic information.<\/p>\n

“A Reform government led by Nigel Farage would immediately blow the lid on what’s really happening and begin deporting these dangerous criminals.”<\/p>\n

Robert Bates, CMC’s research director who submitted the FOI request more than a year ago, said he would use “every available means” to secure publication.<\/p>\n

“It is clearly in the public interest for this information to be released,” he said. “It is astonishing that the Government is going to the courts in an effort to fight against such important transparency, and raises serious questions as to what they are hiding.”<\/p>\n

Breakdown of data<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The MoJ has published some conviction figures, previously reported by The Telegraph, showing overall numbers for all sexual offences but has not provided figures for individual crimes like rape, murder and arson since 2018.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

They showed foreign nationals accounted for one in seven (14.1 per cent) of sexual offence convictions last year, based on data drawn from the Police National Computer.<\/p>\n

The FOI request rejected by the MoJ sought a breakdown of the data within each broad offence category. This would reveal within sex offences the number of rapes, grooming and child sex abuse cases, while for violence against the person, it would show the number of murders, manslaughters and cases of grievous bodily harm.
\nIt also sought specific offences from 2018 to 2024 under the broad categories of drug crimes, possession of weapons, robbery, theft and criminal damage.<\/p>\n

The Information Commissioner rejected the MoJ’s claims that it would be a disproportionate cost to provide the data. “The Commissioner acknowledges that the request is wide in scope and involves the manipulation of a complex dataset,” his office said.<\/p>\n

“However, complexity alone does not obviate the requirement to provide a properly evidenced estimate. In the absence of a coherent explanation of how the estimate [of cost] has been calculated, the Commissioner cannot conclude that the cost limit would be exceeded.”<\/p>\n

The Information Commissioner also rejected claims that it would lead to identification as the MoJ could minimise that risk by removing any offence with fewer than five convictions.<\/p>\n

He ruled that to comply with the law on freedom of information, the MoJ should “disclose the requested information to the complainant”.<\/p>\n

The MoJ is, however, appealing to the general regulatory chamber, a first-tier tribunal which hears challenges against decisions by government regulators.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Mr Timothy last week, Mr Lammy rejected his calls for the full data to be published. He said the MoJ already published a “range of statistical breakdowns” on foreign national offenders and kept publication options under “continuous review”.<\/p>\n

An MoJ spokesman said it did not recognise claims of a cover-up. “We are in the process of appealing the ICO’s decision and we do not comment on live legal proceedings,” he added.<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ministry of Justice is seeking to overturn a ruling by the Information Commissioner that data revealing the full scale of foreign nationals committing crimes in England and Wales should be published. Why, what are they trying to hide?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-european-migrant-crisis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329177,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329156\/revisions\/329177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}